Net Notes

The latest thing on the World Wide Web is Big Book; a very clever online "yellow pages". This site has generated real excitement about the kind of potential that the Web can serve up. Every business in the country that has a yellow pages listing has a listing in this directory.

With this tool, the user can build a search for a particular type of business in a particular locale, and find matches that meet that profile. Businesses that have listings here can edit, extend, and modify information for their business - or even point to their own web pages.

Even better, you can look up any location in the country and it will draw a nifty little map for you. When I showed this around at the office, everybody wanted to look up their own home address, then look up places they USED TO live.

I'm sure this is an extremely popular site to visit; in fact, I've had considerable difficulty pointing my browser to the Maps pages, and I gotta assume that it's just network overload. I didn't have any problem accessing the maps after they went live on February 28th, but haven't had much luck lately. I highly recommend that you take a look at the Big Book today.

The folks at www.excite.com have a similar resource known as City.Net that's definitely worth a visit. It links to news, weather, and touristic information for cities all over the world. They indicate that this is still in development, but I've found it very useful and informative even in its current state. Check it out.

I have developed the opinion that the Prodigy Web Browser is clearly superior to Netscape in resolving graphics, and their site management software (which I thought rather primitive) is easier to work with than the tools AOL provides. (Of course nothing I say will stop the Netscape steamroller.) On the down side, the Prodigy Web Browser is slower, and doesn't do a good job of maintaining local buffers to speed access.

I really hope that the Prodigy people work to resolve this buffering problem, and also work to stay compatible with Netscape characteristics, though they do support the full HTML 3.0 standard. So many people are writing pages using Netscape features it's becoming the real industry standard. Like I say, the graphics quality is really superior with the Prodigy browser - I created all of 'em, so I know the difference.

There did appear to be a glitch in using my navigation links under Prodigy's browser that you didn't have with Netscape, but I think I've got that under control. (Still having problems with the www.excite.com form above, though.)

Prodigy will be allowing the use of Netscape (and presumably any other TCP/IP browsers) in the next month or so. I'm still trying to keep my pages compatible with other browsers, and will continue to write pages that are asthetically pleasing for the Prodigy browser.

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Notes for AOL and other users

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I've looked at these pages using the standard America Online browser, the Netcom Netcruiser (ugh, 'netbruiser'!) and a couple of others (mostly Mosaic based) - and they don't look anywhere near as good. You can download Netscape now, which will make these pages look even better for AOL users. Just go ahead and download the current beta.

You also need to load the WINSOCK.DLL and keep it in your Windows system directory. Read the directions available on AOL; it'll take some effort, but it will be worth it. AOL users, go to the chat room called "Chat About the Web"; someone there will help you, and you may even find me there! Web chatter OpalKat has created a nice page with tips on using Netscape with AOL (among her many others).

I've read that "Browser" is the incorrect term - it should actually be called the "Viewer". Just as the word "codex" is used inappropriately for the painted books of Mexico, I imagine that it the word will continue to be found common usage.